GASing for: a Vintage Fender Bassman 50 Head

Armchair Bronco · Post by **Armchair Bronco** » Sat Jan 31, 2009 11:42 pm

I've been looking for an amp that would be the clean equivalent of the Tiny Terror -- sort of the "Gold Standard" for a smallish clean amp the way the Tiny Terror is the gold standard for low-wattage tube amps with lots of gain. A vintage Fender Bassman 50 head from the mid to late 60's fits the bill.

Yeah, I know that 50 watts puts it outside the low-wattage territory of the TT. But at lower volumes, say below 4 or 5 where it starts to break up, the Bassman is a clean monster. I played a re-capped 1967 Bassman 50 at the Seattle Guitar Center yesterday through a 4x12 cab with Greenbacks. It was freaking awesome clean. I would love to hear my EHX Deluxe Memory Man through this head.

I think my quest is over. Now I just need to start saving my pocket money and keep my eyes open for a killer deal. GC wanted $599 for their Bassman, but if I get lucky I may be able to find one for less than $500.

James · Post by **James** » Sat Jan 31, 2009 11:47 pm

I take it that picture is the one you played considering you said 67 and that looks liek a 67 (drip edge, black vertical lines)? I don't think that's worth $599 from what I hear about American prices.

You should easily be able to pay $400-450 for one that age.

Armchair Bronco · Post by **Armchair Bronco** » Sat Jan 31, 2009 11:53 pm

James wrote:I take it that picture is the one you played considering you said 67 and that looks liek a 67 (drip edge, black vertical lines)? I don't think that's worth $599 from what I hear about American prices.

You should easily be able to pay $400-450 for one that age.

No, that was a picture I found on the web that was pretty close to the one I played in GC. The sales rep said that they had just put their Bassman 50 up for sale early last week. He said it could sell tomorrow or be sitting there for 6 months.

I still don't know the differences between the various flavors of this amp: silverface vs. blackface, pre-CBS vs. post-CBS, etc. But I definitely liked the tone from the amp I played, and I like the size of the head, too. The only other amp in this category I can think of is some kind of Ampeg V-4 or V-2 head from the 1970's.

Will · Post by **Will** » Sun Feb 01, 2009 12:00 am

$400-ish should be about right for a SF Bassman. I paid $300 for the 100W I had some years back, but it was a '72. They are great amps, and super clean.

Ampegs are a great option as well. The prices have gone up since EHX started making the weird hi-fi tubes again, but they're still a huge bargain. Different sound, though; less scooped and wide then the BM. It's more of a focused jazz tone.

Armchair Bronco · Post by **Armchair Bronco** » Sun Feb 01, 2009 12:04 am

How much would it cost to have a vintage version re-capped and refurbished?

For example, there's an eBay auction right now for a Bassman 50 in need of some TLC and new tubes. Current price is $225 + shipping.

This one has a bit more rust and wear-n-tear than I'd like, but it might be a fun upgrade project.

robert(original) · Post by **robert(original)** » Sun Feb 01, 2009 12:24 am

wear n tear means mojo.
i have a 67 silverfaced drip edge, i got it off of aen.
great fucking amp.
and your right it is loud as fuck and clean!
its a down to earth/back to basics sort of amp.
i fucking love mine for guitar, and the old bass player from sirens has been coming over and thumping away on it with my jazz bass, which sounds awsome as well.
im not too sure on the circut differences except i know there is ab165, and aa165, mine is an ab165, and if i were to buy another one i would search out an ab165 circut.

Armchair Bronco · Post by **Armchair Bronco** » Sun Feb 01, 2009 1:04 am

A lot of the reviews on HC talk about being able to patch the two input channels on the Bassman head. What does this mean?

robert(original) · Post by **robert(original)** » Sun Feb 01, 2009 1:16 am

basically plug your guitar into input 1.
then take a patch cord and put it into the 2nd input and then direct it to the bass side, or "normal" side.
depending on where you are plugged in.
its really kinda fun, i do it every now and again, just for the extra over driven bassy noize shit.
the bassman really is a clean canvas for you to build pedals upon.

Armchair Bronco · Post by **Armchair Bronco** » Sun Feb 01, 2009 1:25 am

robert(original) wrote:basically plug your guitar into input 1.
then take a patch cord and put it into the 2nd input and then direct it to the bass side, or "normal" side.
depending on where you are plugged in.
its really kinda fun, i do it every now and again, just for the extra over driven bassy noize shit.
the bassman really is a clean canvas for you to build pedals upon.

Cool. Sounds like fun.

Well, I'm going to read everything I can about this amp in the coming weeks. Then I'll start calling guitar & pawn shops and keeping my eye on CraigsList. I've got my Orange Tiny Terror for all the crunchy stuff I play. It's also a damn nice clean amp, but that's not its forte. I think a vintage Bassman will be a great 2nd tube amp for me.

robert(original) · Post by **robert(original)** » Sun Feb 01, 2009 2:00 am

im warning you, you'll get it and won't touch your terror.
well maybe you will, i haven't touched my cyber twin in months becuz of this amp.

Armchair Bronco · Post by **Armchair Bronco** » Sun Feb 01, 2009 2:13 am

Ha! My only fear is that it'll be way too freakin' loud for home use.

You see: I'm just a living room jammer. My gigging aspirations are to do a solo open mic performance or something similar. But I'm going through a clean phase right now and really having fun playing my Deluxe Memory Man and Small Clone through my Tiny Terror with the volume dimed but with the gain held back to about 10 o'clock.

I'm hoping that for cleanish tones with the Bassman 50, I'll still be able to play at reasonable levels.

robert(original) · Post by **robert(original)** » Sun Feb 01, 2009 2:16 am

hhhmmmmm
find a head and i guess a good 12 inch speaker,
i pretty much leave mine from about 2.5-3.5
thats the perfect area, sounds really clean and its loud, after about 5-6 it starts to break up nicely depending on which guitar i use.
anything past 8 is too loud for human ears to understand, but its full on rawk tones from there.
i have had it set to about 1 before and it was decent enough for a small room jam.
its powerful tho, even at low volumes, it packs a punch.

Armchair Bronco · Post by **Armchair Bronco** » Sun Feb 01, 2009 2:31 am

8 ohm speakers should work OK with the Bassman 50, right?

I know that it also works with 4 ohm speakers, but if I step up to a 2x12 cab, I'll want something that I can also use with the TT (which connects to 8 ohm and 16 ohm speakers). My current cab is an 8-ohm Avatar 1x12 cube with a Celestion G12H30.

Will · Post by **Will** » Sun Feb 01, 2009 8:49 am

Cap jobs are expensive-ish if you pay someone. They're actually not that difficult to do yourself if you have a soldering iron and make a discharge wand.

robert(original) · Post by **robert(original)** » Sun Feb 01, 2009 1:52 pm

the discharging shit scares me.
ray the amp builder in st. lious freaked me out one day by saying that if i just reached into one of his amps with my bare hand the shock would stop my heart.
i really don't know much about speaker ohms and what not.
mine is pretty much stock cept for the speakers they are celestion vintage 30's if i remember correctly.
no matter what tho, im tempted to say try and get a closed back 2X12 cab, i tried mine with the back off, then put it back on and could really hear a difference, so there it stays.
but try it non the less, everyone is difference.

James · Post by **James** » Sun Feb 01, 2009 2:47 pm

First things first, ditch teh Kurtz avatar and stop paying attention to Harmon Central reviews unless it's something quite rare and hard to find info about. For something as common as a Bassman, there is a wealth of info that is a lot more credible than "I play everything from white man blues to clapton covers and have owned all amps from those little danelectro pedal mini amps to Hendrex's stack itself, this blows them all away."

I'm going to be a little off base towards the end here because I'm doing it from memory but roughly....

Late 1963 - Brown face plate changes to black, still using blonde tolex and will most likely be way out of your price range
August 64 - Black tolex starts and the blackface bassman is born with the AA864 circuit (AA means the first circuit version, 8 represents August, and 64 the year)
January 65 - Circuit changes to AA165 (AA as before, 1 for January and 65 the year) and then in the same month to AB165 (AB meaning the second circuit that month)
1967 - Face plate changes to silver, and it has what people call the 'drip edge'. This is like the amp in the picture where it has piping around the grill cloth. In terms of the inside, these amps are the same design as the blackface AB165
About 1969 - Drip edge goes, some small changes have happened to do with the components but the circuit is still roughly the same and still given the same name.
About 1971 or so - 'Bassman amp' changes to 'Bassman 50'. All of the ones that say bassman amp are 50w though.
Mid 70s - Bassman 70 comes in, and later (maybe 1980 or so) the Bassman 135.

The AA165 amps are the most rare, and are possibly worth a bit more because of it. The AA864 amps are seen as the classic bassman and a lot of the later silverface amps have been modded to or towards that spec.

There are some circuit revisions in the 70s that I don't really know much about. I was reading about them and planning on buying a silverface when I bought a blackface for cheap, so I stopped reading about the SF and started with the BF.

Most 50w Bassman amps you'll find are the AB165 circuit. If you find an AA864 and can afford it I'd recommend getting one. A 67 blackface will have the same circuit as a 67 silverface but might cost you a bit more.

robert(original) · Post by **robert(original)** » Sun Feb 01, 2009 2:56 pm

i actually learned alot right there.
so you are saying that this amp is great for blues, but only with my stratocaster, and i have to get a marshall and a les paul for souther rock?
i keed, i keed.
i had thought that the aa, and ab circuits were pretty different from eachother, kinda like finding two ways to the same destination, thus producing a different interpretation of the instrument.
there was also a bassman 100 head,
the bassman phantom, the bassmen 10
and i once say a solid state bassman head from around 79 or so on ebay.

Armchair Bronco · Post by **Armchair Bronco** » Sun Feb 01, 2009 5:55 pm

James wrote:First things first, ditch teh Kurtz avatar and stop paying attention to Harmon Central reviews unless it's something quite rare and hard to find info about.

Naw, the Cobain avatar stays. I like Nirvana. I moved to Seattle in 1987 and started watching Nirvana, Mud Honey, Malfunkshun, Sound Garden and scores of other local bands in tiny venues and was like "Holy Shit! What's goin' on in Seattle?" I'm 45 and my Kurt avatar reminds me of the halcyon days of grunge in The Emerald City.

As far as the Harmony Central reviews are concerned, I use them more for entertainment purposes and for late-night reading than as the definitive source of factual information. But a lot of HC review are freakin' hilarious. Sure, half of them are fiction, but enough of them are entertaining enough to keep me interested. The Bassman 50 head doesn't have a cult following like the Ampeg V2 or V4 heads, and they don't have the whole "mod" support structure like the Fender Blues Junior, so it's not as easy to find websites that talk exhaustively about the technical details of this amp. For example, I still don't know if I can run an 8-ohm 2x12 cab with this head or only a 4-ohm cab... But the reviews help to fill in some of the gaps.

By the way, nice summary of the lineage of the Bassman amps! Thanks for dat.

Post by **Mike** » Sun Feb 01, 2009 7:11 pm

8 ohm cab will be fine but it won't sound as good as it would with a matched load. The Fender transformers can handle the mismatch though.

I'm with James about the Kurt avatar. It's 2009.

Will · Post by **Will** » Sun Feb 01, 2009 7:25 pm

robert(original) wrote:the discharging shit scares me.
ray the amp builder in st. lious freaked me out one day by saying that if i just reached into one of his amps with my bare hand the shock would stop my heart.

It is way scary the first time, but you gotta learn at some point. I made my wand out of a length of wire, a 47k 2-watt resistor, and an alligator clip. Clip it to a known ground and touch the other end to pin 1 of the first preamp tube for 30 seconds. That gets rid of most of the charge. Then just touch the positive end of each filter cap for a few seconds to drain what's left.

SIMPLE. If you're really scared, wear leather gloves or something.